It was kind of an accident. When Lisa Tobin arrived at The New York Times nearly seven months ago, she had a broad mission: Figure out what the newspaper was supposed to sound like. “I expected that we would come in and spend several months figuring that out and then starting to finalize strategy and figure out what our first-round programming would be,” said Tobin. That’s pretty […]
Newsrooms around the world are experimenting with virtual reality more and more, but mass adoption of the medium has been slowed by the lack of quality content and an industry-wide inability to make money from it. That’s the gist of a new report, released this evening by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, that tracks adoption of and experimentation with virtual reality at major legacy […]
It was kind of an accident. When Lisa Tobin arrived at The New York Times nearly seven months ago, she had a broad mission: Figure out what the newspaper was supposed to sound like. “I expected that we would come in and spend several months figuring that out and then starting to finalize strategy and figure out what our first-round programming would be,” Tobin said. That’s pretty […]
Julien Pain was tired of preaching to the choir. After spending several years debunking viral fakes for France 24’s Les Observateurs, Pain was on the lookout for a format that would expand the reach of his fact-checking. “I realized I was only reaching people who agreed with me,” says Pain. “And people who didn’t check their information wouldn’t be reading my fact-checking.” Since September, he has taken […]
As her email mess was growing, Hillary Clinton scheduled the first national TV interview of her campaign with Brianna Keilar of CNN. It went poorly. But wait. It now turns out that Clinton aide Huma Abedin had meant “Bianna,” not “Brianna” when she disclosed her belated intent to a communications aide. She wanted what she figured would be a non-threatening session with Yahoo! News’ Bianna Golodryga, who […]
This article is part of an ongoing series on digital tools for journalists. We’ve spent the past few weeks talking about tools for keeping reporters and their sources safe. This week, Poynter’s Ren LaForme is focusing on a tool that will help you find which information about you is on the internet, what you may want to clean up and what you can discover about sources. So, […]
There were five huge boxes sitting at the loading dock of The Poynter Institute yesterday, waiting for the FedEx truck to pick them up. They are filled with more than 125 file boxes containing the literary effects of Donald M. Murray, in my opinion the most influential writing teacher America has ever known. The precious content of those boxes — including 100 of Murray’s experimental daybooks — […]
About six months ago, we bought a drone to help us cover stories at the Yakima Herald-Republic, a daily newspaper in Yakima, Washington. We’d seen other people’s drone footage of fires and floods and protests, and wanted to get our own. We knew that a drone had a lot of potential to contribute to our news coverage, but we didn’t know exactly what rules apply to journalists, […]
We in the media love nicknames for notorious people. Often, these names are associated with a place or thing that has a random connection, like The Boston Strangler, The Green River Killer or The San Bernardino Shooters. This time it’s “The Facebook killer,” the shorthand description for the actions of Steve Stephens, who killed an elderly Cleveland man at random, then posted the video to his Facebook […]
Good morning. Program changes are same old The swashbuckling Murdochs now look as milquetoast as old media rivals whom they upended and disdain. With the belated firing of Bill O’Reilly, the monarchical lords of 21st Century Fox turned 1990s with their initial programming decisions. Yes, you can easily make dumb decisions when you’re king of any media hill and a financial juggernaut. But the initial post-O’Reilly programming […]
It was money that kept Bill O’Reilly in his bulletproof bully’s pulpit at Fox News despite sordid sex harassment claims dating back 13 years. And in the end, it was money — not morals — that catapulted him out. For two decades, O’Reilly has been the acid-tongued, anti-political correctness muse and megaphone of the populist right and scolder of the mainstream media — a role that crowned […]
Poynter on Thursday announced a final list of 21 local news organizations that will participate in the Poynter Local News Innovation Project, receiving guidance from the Institute to help them transform their newsrooms into digital-first enterprises. The program, a project of the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative, is designed to spur digital transformation in local news organizations and will include tiny, low-circulation newspapers as well as major metros. Here’s […]
A few months ago, staff at The Minneapolis Star Tribune did something journalists don’t always have the time to do: think way ahead. One year in advance, staff photographers shot images of the Minnesota winter for next winter’s StarTribune Magazine. The quarterly magazine debuted Sunday, marking a new product for a newsroom that’s worked hard over the last year to become more digital. But that new product […]
Editor’s note: This article was previously published on Medium. The author is the executive director of LION Publishers, a national network of independent news sites. Margaret Sullivan is right to sound the alarm about what steep newspaper cuts are doing to local journalism across the country, but her April 16 Washington Post column misses the story of what is replacing, and has the potential to replace, the […]
“O’Reilly Factor” host Bill O’Reilly has been ousted from Fox News amid a growing furor over sexual harassment allegations and multiple confidential settlements with former employees at the network. O’Reilly, whose perennial ratings success over multiple decades earned him the moniker “the King of Cable News,” will not be returning to the network from a vacation to Italy announced last week after a New York Times article […]
Even special dispensation from Pope Francis probably won’t save Bill O’Reilly. O’Reilly was in a VIP line at the Vatican on Wednesday as a holy war over his employment status was apparently climaxing in New York. He’s apparently a goner from his mega-successful Fox News show, “The O’Reilly Factor,” in a turn of events that will further spotlight the precarious nature of finding winning TV personalities. Indeed, […]
Last summer Betsy O’Donovan, the incoming Executive Director of The Daily Tar Heel, wrote an essay on Medium charting the dire financial situation of UNC-Chapel Hill’s student newspaper. It started pretty bluntly: “The Daily Tar Heel is a news organization, and we don’t dodge the facts: This 123-year-old institution has two years to figure out its finances.” The Daily Tar Heel, like many news organizations these days, […]
Americans are highly aware that President Trump and the media have locked swords, and nearly three-quarters think those tensions are suppressing their access to important political news. Those are the findings of a new two-question survey the Pew Research Center released today. Hardly surprising, Pew researchers found that 83 percent of a survey panel of more than 4,000 believe Trump’s relationship with the media “is generally unhealthy.” […]
Every time you watch TV, listen to radio, open a web site or read a newspaper, magazine or book, someone is trying to tell — or sell — you something. The best way to achieve media literacy is to evaluate all the messages that bombard you. Ask these questions to understand the message: Who created, or paid for, the message? The company, group or institution that creates […]
Headlines are lifelines to our readers. They grab attention, build trust and help time-pressed consumers focus on the stories they care most about. They link readers with our content, giving us a chance to reach our audience across a sea of information. Headlines also help search engines decide whether our offerings match what users are looking for online or on mobile. Here are some guidelines for choosing […]
With a network of local stations that criss-cross the United States and a roster of hit podcasts to its name, NPR has big — and often separate — audiences on the radio and internet. NPR’s newest podcast, “Up First,” aims to reach the digital audience with a spin on a tried-and-true radio product. The 10-minute daily news podcast, which has been months in the making, is a hybrid […]
Journalism has a trust problem. In the run-up to the 2016 election, a Gallup poll revealed Americans’ trust in the press had sunk to an all-time low, with just 32 percent surveyed they felt “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of trust in the mainstream media. Whether it’s criticism from the Trump administration, the failure of the media to correctly forecast the outcome of the 2016 […]
When Nicole Dahmen opened her Sunday paper early last month, she found something she wasn’t expecting. On Feb. 12, The (Eugene, Oregon) Register-Guard announced the start of an ongoing editorial project on homelessness. “Living in the Northwest, living in the West Coast, living in Eugene, homelessness is the problem,” said Dahmen, an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. The […]
With so many respected newsrooms still adjusting to having the president call them “enemy of the American people,” next week’s announcement of the 2017 Pulitzer Prizes feels like a showdown. What will the winning journalism say about the press’ value to the public? We’re about to find out. Pulitzer selections reflect a closed-door, two-step process at New York’s Columbia University, which administers the prizes. Jurors from around […]
